BURNLEY returned to the Premier League with all the pomp and ceremony you might expect for a side whose first game after promotion was at home to Chelsea: the title favourites.

There was no escape from the build-up. But Alex Coleman did not shy away from it, even though he was no longer involved.

Instead the ex-Claret and a few of his friends found a bar screening Monday night’s match in Magaluf on the first holiday that the 20-year-old can remember taking in August. At that time of year he would usually be found on a football field.

He had been on Burnley’s books, in various capacities and age groups, from being seven – more than half of his life. For the last two years he had been named among their list of professionals.

But while promotion to the Premier League was good news for the club, it was bad news for a number of their young players, including Coleman.

“The manager just said ‘I don’t think next year you’re going to play in the Premier League’,” he said, explaining how Sean Dyche broke the news.

“It’s not as if we’d finished mid-table and we’d been leaking goals, it wasn’t as if I had a leg to stand on. I just had to accept it. I’m not going to argue with someone who had done the job he had done.”

After helping the Clarets reach the semi-finals of the Premier League Under 21s Cup in April, putting in a spirited performance against the might of Manchester City, there was talk of a move to Bury for Coleman. It never materialised.

There was interest from other clubs, but nothing came to fruition.

At 5ft 11ins, the centre half felt that height was against him as well as circumstances.

“You could name on one hand the number of centre halves under 6ft who have made it – Fabio Cannavaro, Carles Puyol and Javier Mascherano – there aren’t so many,” he said.

“It’s a bit unfortunate that maybe the one major thing that was holding me back is the one thing I can’t control, because everything else that I can control I’ve made sure I’m the best I can possibly be at.”

Coleman, an able cricketer (although by his own admission ‘an ugly batter’) played for Lancashire schoolboys up until his Burnley apprenticeship at 16.

He found himself with plenty of time to dwell on the what-ifs over the summer.

The former youth team skipper and Under 18s player of the year, said he was used to the down time in the closed season, but even so found himself “drifting through life”.

His part-time job in a pub served only to finance his next night out – dipping his toe into the ‘normal’ teenage years he missed out on – via appearances for Haslingden Cricket Club in the Lancashire League.

The captain in him seized control of the situation, and with a little help of some tough love from his friend’s dad, his landlord at The Railway, Huncoat, he has fallen back in love with football with Colne FC, eight tiers below Burnley.

The leap from Premier League newcomers to the North West Counties League Premier Division seems a drastic one, but it is all part of a bigger plan for Coleman.

“Nobody really sees the not-so glamorous side of football, everybody just sees the people who are playing on Saturday at 3 o’clock and earning thousands of pounds a week. They don’t see the 10 or 11 young lads who are busting their gut to try to get something.

“Right now it wouldn’t be a problem if I had one-year contracts here, one-year contracts there, but if I’m going to live the whole of my life like that and I want to start a family and buy a house, when you get into your late 20s and early 30s I’m not sure if that’s the lifestyle that I would want,” he said, with impressive maturity.

“Now I’ve taken this decision I’ve also thought that if I, personally, really wanted to do it and really wanted to make a career out of it I could have done because I would have chased things up. But I didn’t.

“I think I was so disheartened at first I just didn’t want anything to do with it, and I got on with things pretty quickly.

“I was disappointed at home but on the outside I didn’t want anybody to know really.

“It wasn’t that I’d failed, because I didn’t feel I’d failed. It was just the questions.

“I know people were just being nice and saying they were sorry to hear what had happened and asked if I’d found anything else, but I was answering the same question to every single person every time I walked anywhere and saw anyone who knew me.

“I know they were just trying to be nice...”

Coleman just wanted to get on with his life. He hopes that will be at Salford University on a four-year physio degree course that he has an interview for on Wednesday.

He is not looking for sympathy.

Although the decision to leave Burnley after 13 years was not of his making, he is in charge of the next chapter, and he is content with how it reads right now.

“I’m really enjoying just playing at Colne. We’ve got a good team and a good set of lads. I’m just enjoying having less pressure and enjoying playing football.

“And fingers crossed in four years’ time I’ll be a physio,” said Coleman, a former Haslingden High School pupil. He has always been studious; an exception to the perception that footballers “aren’t the brightest”, no doubt influenced by his mum, Alison – a senior lecturer in health and social care at Salford.

“When everyone else did BTECs I did two A-levels – Geography and PE,” he added.

“I’ve always thought that if football didn’t work out I’d have something to fall back on.

“This, hopefully, is going to be one of those things.”

Coleman, who captained the Clarets youth team to their first FA Youth Cup semi-final appearance in 33 years – against rivals Blackburn Rovers, has no regrets, or grudges.

“Playing in front of nearly 15,000 people at Turf Moor, I’ll never ever forget that as long as I live. It was amazing,” he said.

“I’ll never forget standing in the tunnel for the first leg (at Ewood Park) and being really nervous, and then I walked out and heard all the Burnley fans on the right roar, and suddenly all my nerves just went.

“That’s when I first thought I should give this a crack and see if I can do it.

“That was just over two years ago. That’s how quickly things change in football. It’s a ruthless business at the end of the day.

“But Burnley have given me a great life for the four years they’ve been paying me, I’ve made great friends and I still stay in touch with the coaches.

“It’s just the way football is and that’s maybe why I took this decision because I wasn’t sure I wanted that to be my life.

“I’ve come to terms with things now and I’m glad that I’ve got something else to focus on.”